At a press event yesterday, I was invited deep into the bowels of Microsoft …

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The timing was no doubt intentional. On the same day that Apple had announced a major press conference to unveil something "fun" (which turned out to be an Intel-powered Mac mini and an iPod speaker the size and shape of a giant brick), Microsoft tantalizingly offered journalists the opportunity to come and witness a new and exciting technology. As Redmond was a much shorter trip for me than Cupertino, I obliged.

What was this fabulous new technology? All they would tell us was that it wasn't Origami, the much-rumored touchscreen mini Tablet-PC device. So as our small group sat there in the giant Microsoft Executive Briefing foyer, deprived of any Internet access (wireless or otherwise), we wondered what they could possibly be on about.

We were gathered into a small room, where a host of video and still cameras crowded around the display panel on the wall. Kevin Schofield, the General Manager of Microsoft Research, introduced a team of four researchers who would be demonstrating the new technology. First, he gave a background chat about Microsoft Research itself.

The division was formed in 1991 by Bill Gates and former theoretical physicist Nathan Myhrvold, then Microsoft's Chief Technology Officer. Today it is headed by Rick Rashid, who is best known for creating the Mach kernel and operating system at Carnegie-Mellon University. (Ironically, it would be his student, Avie Tevanian, who would wind up turning Mach into a commercial product with NeXTstep and then OS X). Over 700 people in five separate labs (one in Redmond, one in Silicon Valley, one in Bangladore, one in Beijing, and one in Cambridge) work in Microsoft Research. Rather than thinking about how their inventions might fit into the marketplace, the members of the division are more concerned about how many papers they can get published in academic journals. This creates an atmosphere more similar to a university than a large corporation, according to Dr. Marc Smith, PhD, who describes himself as a "Research Sociologist." While the group isn't directly concerned with getting its products out into the marketplace, they still like to see the fruits of their labors being utilized. Schofield finished his introduction by saying:

"We believe that tech transfer [from research to products] isn't a logistical and mechanical process, but actually a social process."

By this time, the assembled journalists were anxious to see exactly what was going to be unfurled. I was the first one in the room to have noticed the Dance Dance Revolution (DDR) pad on the floor, but even I was surprised when it turned out to be the centerpiece of the event. Dr. AJ Brush, PhD, jumped on the pad and showed us how the team had used the off-the-shelf gaming interface to demonstrate a new method of human-computer interaction.

Closeup of the e-mail interface.

Firing up a custom-built e-mail application, she used her feet on the up and down arrows to scroll through messages, and hit another pad to open and close them for viewing. E-mails could be flagged using the left and right arrows. Deleting was the most fun, as it involved jumping and hitting a specific combo (right arrow and the diagonal between up and left) together. Dr. Brush said that test subjects had gotten quite excited about deleting e-mails and became a bit too carried away in cleaning out their Inbox.

Dr. Stephen Drucker then demonstrated a second possible application for the pad, a smooth-scrolling photo management application in the vein of iPhoto or "Microsoft Codename Max." The user could quickly run through photos and sort them into different folders using the DDR pad, although Dr. Brush did admit that in testing it was found that one's right leg could get tired while constantly scrolling to the next photo.

Dr. Drucker demonstrates a photo sorting program.

The floor was then opened up to questions. First off the bat was the obvious one: it looks like fun, but when the fun wears off, how practical is such a system? Schofield admitted that there have to be specific, measurable increases in productivity for a new system like this to take off, but that there were some cases where people might welcome a change of pace in the way they interact with their computer. The opportunity to stand up, stretch, and get a small bit of exercise while simultaneously sorting through your Inbox might appeal to busy workers who are hunched over their keyboards all day long. Besides, he concluded, "there is no law that says work can't be fun."

The question of a learning curve for the new user interface was brought up. Dr. Drucker replied that while they hadn't done coordination testing, they had discovered that learning a new UI can be fun, as many opening levels in video games have shown. However, the user does not necessarily have to hit both pads simultaneously for performing certain functions: one foot can be planted at a time for people who don't feel comfortable with jumping. I verified this myself on the pad. Jumping, however, is clearly much more fun.

Will this device actually make it into a shipping product? "That we leave up to the product groups. They are the experts," Schofield said. "Personally, I can envision this being in all sorts of products." One example that was given was a display kiosk in a mall, where shoppers could interact with the display without putting down their bags. Such kiosks are already planned for demonstration purposes inside Microsoft buildings.

I asked if there was a difference in reactions to the system between older and younger test subjects. My wife, who is a dancer, introduced me to DDR a few years ago. While we have often played it together, most of the people we play with in the arcades are half our age. The few people in our age category who even dare to try the system are extremely tentative and often fail to pick it up at all. Indeed, when the journalists were offered a chance to try out the system themselves, very few came forward immediately. However, researcher Brian Meyers insisted that when their adult test subjects overcame their initial embarrassment and got used to the idea, they quickly became fans of the system.

Is the world ready for Dance Dance E-mail? Perhaps not, but the point of the press event was not just to show that one can hook up a DDR pad to business applications (although this is the first time I've heard anyone come up with that idea!). It was designed to show us that Microsoft is busy thinking about new and different ways that people can interact with their computers. Microsoft Research actually has a ton of other projects on the go, as I discovered later during an informative chat with Dr. Smith. Most of these, like systems designed to sift through Usenet news posts and track which people are providing useful information, are interesting but highly conceptual. Jumping up and down on a DDR pad to delete your e-mail, however, fits neatly into a news sound bite. Besides, it's good exercise.